Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[acellier]

    I am baffled as to how to control frames per second for ftp in motion detection.
    We have two DCS-930L viewing our driveway (shared with several other houses). When I first got the cameras, it seemed I could only get 15 frames per second when ftp'ing, regardless of settings on the Video or ftp page. But for some months now we have been happily getting 2 fps, which is great. I'd even like to get just 1 fps.
    Now an older DCS-932L and a brand new DCS-930L are mounted in a test configuration on a nearby public road. And they are sending 15 fps regardless of settings, as earlier. I really need to get the traffic down to 1 frame per second.
    What is the secret to adjusting the fps for ftp with motion detection?

[JavaLawyer]

You might want to try saving a configuration file from one of the older DCS-930s and uploading the file to the new DCS-930L. Are all cameras of the same model running the same FW version?

       

[acellier]

I don't think I want to do that - at least not yet - scared of bricking something.
    Search of forum history shows that I reported on this 15 fps problem in September 2011.
http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=41127.0 / 41132.0 / 41134.0
    I think I recall that those first tests in 2011 were ftp'ing to a hard drive connected to my router, and my current issue is ftp'ing direct into a Mac laptop; stuck at 15 fps.
    My two at-home DCS-930L's have (for ~18 months) been giving me 2 fps triggered by motion, ftp'ing to a remote server. One of them had earlier been set to ftp at 300 second intervals (not motion) to remote server, and operated correctly in that mode.
    The DCS-932L that is now giving 15 fps to the local Mac was previously used here at home, where it gave 2 fps to the remote server. The newer DCS-930L hasn't been used before. I've tried multiple times to reprogram the video and ftp rate with zero affect.
    I wonder if somehow ftp'ing to a distant server is *somehow* detected (maybe, the delay in acq response? but - passive/active seem to act the same) and causes/allows the reduced the frame rate (!?!?); I think that may be my experience. I'm going to have to play with the alternatives and see. But that does not seem logical ...
    Any ftp experts out there? (I'm guessing, not at D-Link).

[acellier]

Some numbers may be useful for others thinking about saving images on a server.
    The reason for concern about the high frame rate is this:
    Our cameras at home save maybe 5-7 images per vehicle (at about 2 frames per second). The server accumulates maybe 7000 images per camera over 10 days. Very manageable for server capacity, and for review when desired.
    On the public road (entry to our subdivision) vehicle traffic is maybe 20 times higher than on the road spur in front of our house.
    So, 15 fps and usually a couple of extra seconds of blank scene, results in over 50 images per vehicle. In a 24 hour period, we got over 100,000 images per camera! My remote server limits my storage to 250,000 files; and, sorting through that much per day would be awful, not to mention having to dump the server frequently. Such high frame rate is not needed in this application; it's not intended to be an action movie.
    Not to mention, when shifting cloud shadows, or fog, or blowing foliage occur - then the numbers increase.

[acellier]

BINGO!
ftp'ing to remote server, the frame rate is about 2 fps
This was the DCS-932L
no other programming change except the remote server vs. local

Why? I dunno ...

FWIW ping time to local camera is 1.3 ms
         ping time to remote server is 60 ms

Seems to be 2 fps no matter how I try to set the fps (have to go to 'always' mode to change it).
free-run ftp works with x seconds per frame; trying to set 3 fps gave numerous 0-byte files!

[steb]

I too have a problem with this large amount of files beeing transfered to the server. I would like 1 or at most 2 fps to my remote FTP server.
But how?? regardless how I set up the setup it just ends upp sending about 7 frames per seconds. My ISP told me to stop using their server as storage because of the amount of images..

anyone have a tip for me??

I have some 930s and one 932 camera and having the same problem on both.

thank you!

[acellier]

stebb -
please tell us 1) where are you located, 2) where is your server(ask your server provider). We are trying to collect data on this issue.
We find that from our Southern California location, with the server in Pennsylvania, we get about 2 frames per second; using a local device (computer, or [HDD, or USB memory] plugged into our router) we get 15 fps.
There seems to be NO control in the camera other than the cross-country delay!
Perhaps your server provider can have you use a more distant server?

[steb]

Hello Acellier, thank you for your respond.

Oh, yes I guess that's one interesting "workaround" to keep the number of images down but I really think Dlink should have this in mind when upgrading their firmware though. Perhaps I should try another FTP-host anyways beacuse I'm not actually allowed to use my ISP webserver for storage. But when you pay for the service you would like to use it...

As for now I actually think fewer images will be uploaded if I setup the camera to send 1 images every sec (86400 pict/24h) instead of when a motion is detected. However this is not suitable for me either because I want to know if/when something is happening and don't want to go through 24 hours of images to see IF something has happened.
To answer your question I believe I have a very nice connection to my ISP's FTPserver (as far as I know we both have our mailboxes here in Stockholm/Sweden). The speed is excellent when transfering/executing commands to the server and I guess (after reading your respond) that's why my camera have the time to uploading all these images.

My router is a asus rt n668, I know it has some kind of qos-function that could set different priority to different kind of data. Maybe it's possible to turn down the transfer speed for the camera but I think that only kicks in when the total amount passing the router is higher than my connection to the ISP...

I guess I hope that the dlink folks are reading this thread and takes this in consideration.

Thank you Acellier.

[acellier]

    Here is another data point - we set up two cameras, one each DCS-930L and DCS-932L, viewing a public street (only entrance to a suburban residential neighborhood). The cameras were roughly back-to-back, viewing traffic in both directions. The DCS-932L was in continuous daytime mode. We setup ftp to a Mac (OS 10.5. laptop, as a VERY local server.
    In our approximately 29-hour (1130 Monday to 1630 Tuesday) test, we collected 101,000 images on the DCS-930L and 109340 images on the DCS-932L. I have not completed analyzing the (tedious!) traffic count, but it seems that in daylight hours there were approximately 60 to 80 images per vehicle. A really big waste of storage, and very time consuming to sort through.
    So, yes, your thought of simply taking one image per second would have produced about the same total  image count - although many would have been of empty scenes.
    These cameras CRY for the missing ability to set the ftp frame rate upon motion detection.
    ...

[Lars-Erik]

I too have this problem. The lack of frame-rate settings when in "motion detect" mode make it useless.
I have set it at interval now (each 300 sec). But that isn't quite satisfying :-(
I'd like to use motion detect, but then the camera floods the FTP-server :-(
1 fps should be max rate for motion detect (both for FTP and e-mail).
E-mail with motion detect has to little time between the 6 frames.

[Lars-Erik]

Even stranger. I have set FTP upload to every 5 minutes with numer suffixes.
But only every other image is uploaded??
like 01, 03, 05, 07....
And timestamps are each 10 minutes....
Any logical reason for 50% of the files missing?
Why should the upload fail for half of the files?

[acellier]

Lars-Erik -
    We are using 2-930L and 1-932L here in Southern California, ftp goes to a server in Pennsylvania, and somehow the time delay for that results in a pretty nice 2 fps upon motion. We did have to play with the sensitivity control, and we often miss events (people or cars passing in the road (20 or 30 feet from the camera) in order to avoid getting huge numbers of images of cloud shadows and branches swaying in the wind.
   The ftp to remote serve does result in frequent zero-byte (uncompleted) file transfers, as shown at
                 http://smg.photobucket.com/user/acellier/library/zero-bytes
   Notice that these mostly occur at xx:00, xx:20, and xx:40 - which seems to point to the processor being extra busy at those times. So, intruders to D-Link equiped houses are advised to enter the premises at those time epochs.

   But, this setup does work for 80 percent of the need.
   It is too bad that D-Link is deaf to this FIRMWARE design and performance problem. I have bought and returned several cameras hoping for better capability, but so far always disappointed.

[GaryNY]

The best solution seems to be to pay a little more and get the "enhanced" cameras like the DCS-942L.  Those cameras do have rate control for both ftp and email.  It's too bad these 93x cameras don't. This might be because the on-board memory for firmware is smaller.  Probably due to this, these cameras don't have as many features as the enhanced models.  But it's really too bad they didn't include a rate control.  That's by far the biggest missing feature on these cameras.

I manage to get by with mine by using only email notification, using the 6 pictures per event, 1 second per picture setting.  I use this to slow the camera down actually, because if I specify 1 email per event, the camera is capable of sending many more than 1 email per second.  When I used this in combination with ftp, it seemed to slow the ftp down to the same one per second rate. Maybe when you enable both it tries to alternate between email and ftp? But I've stopped using ftp, and use only email now.

Maybe if you turn on both email, 6 pictures per event, and ftp also, you might slow the ftp rate to 1 per second.  If you send the emails to a junk account, or maybe even an intentionally bad email server address, maybe this would slow the camera down.  I have not tried sending to a bad email account or bad server, but I'd guess the camera might get slowed down trying.  If it stops sending ftp while it tries to send an email, this might end up slowing the ftp rate down for you.

[acellier]

@GaryNY - That's a good idea! I may try it. ISP may not like it, though. Maybe there's a way to keep the email inside the local system ...
It seems that the DCS-931L should do better, as it has double the memory of the 930. But no ...
I tried a 2239, but it did not have the hour and 30-minute folders ftp option - everything went into ONE really big folder ...

[GaryNY]

@GaryNY - That's a good idea! I may try it. ISP may not like it, though. Maybe there's a way to keep the email inside the local system ...
It seems that the DCS-931L should do better, as it has double the memory of the 930. But no ...
I tried a 2239, but it did not have the hour and 30-minute folders ftp option - everything went into ONE really big folder ...

Just to follow up on this, I don't think my idea will work.  I've re-enabled FTP on my camera, to a different (bigger storage limit) FTP server that won't fill up so fast.  I also have email enabled, sending 1 picture per second by email for 6 seconds.  Even with this setting, the camera is sending 2 or 3 images per second to my FTP server.  It appears having 1 picture per second email doesn't slow the FTP rate down to 1 per second (but it may slow it down slightly, by consuming bandwidth on my cable modem, and probably keeping the camera busy too).  It appeared I only got one image per second on the last FTP server I used, but that may have been as fast as that FTP server could accept.